A/N: I own nothing - these are JK Rowling's characters.

Another scream rent the air, and something deep within Narcissa cracked.

“Stop it, Bella!” she screamed at her sister. Tool late, she realised her error as Bellatrix stared at her first in confusion and then distain.

“Ooh, does little Cissy not have the stomach for it?” she mocked knowingly.

“Of course I do.” Narcissa’s cool voice was light, tight control carefully wrapped back around her like a shroud. “You heard me give my pledge to the Dark Lord. I just think that there are … subtler …. methods. After all, we would not wish to be caught for a worm like that!” Her lips pursed in feigned disgust as she flicked her head in the direction of the man panting for breath at their feet, but she did not look at him. “Why don’t you find Rodolphus and leave this to me.”

Bellatrix regarded her sceptically.

“Let me prove myself,” Narcissa entreated her sister.

Finally Bellatrix nodded and swept curtly from the room with little fanfare.

Narcissa slid to her knees beside the man on the floor as soon as Bellatrix had left and started pulling at his bindings with elegant fingers unused to such clumsy haste. She wondered once again as she did so why she was doing this. He ought to be nothing to her but a worthless Halfblood, who stood against the Dark Lord. She was a Black; she was a Slytherin; she was a Death Eater, and she was, it seemed, a traitor to her blood.

As she crouched over him, hazel eyes sought hers, and she understood. It was his kind eyes that had brought her to this – eyes that had never stared at her all throughout their school days with the judgement that so many carried when they looked upon a Slytherin, eyes that asked nothing from her. He had never gazed at her with the empty lust of the other boys; if he had looked at her at all, it was with same the open honesty with which he had looked upon everybody else. He had seen her as a person, not just a doll.

“Go!” she whispered. It was all she dared say.

“Thank you,” Remus Lupin rasped, as the ropes fell away from his wrists. His voice was thick with the recent pain, and its shadow lingered in his eyes.

A few pale strands of Narcissa’s hair swept down caressing her cheek and falling across his. It made her all too aware of their disturbing proximity and she struggled to catch her breath. Closing her eyes to steady herself, she felt the gentle pressure of his lips as they sought hers.

The moment was gone as quickly as it had come, but Narcissa was frozen behind her shuttered eyes. Delicate tendrils of warmth sought the forgotten places in her heart.

“Will I see you again?” The words jarred her back from her reverie, and the candlelight seemed to burn into her soul as she opened her eyes.

“Perhaps…” she whispered.